Footloose in an RV: America's new nomads

Cutting expenses by as much as $1,500 per month isn't unusual, full-timers say, when utility bills, property taxes, and household maintenance costs aren't siphoning family finances.

Still, it is nonfinancial factors that often propel people to go full time. For Brenda Comire, living in a 40-foot, $225,000 RV guaranteed that she and her husband, Roger, wouldn't become sedate in retirement. "I didn't want to spend all my retirement [just at] home in one place where we'd just sit and look at each other," says Ms. Comire.

Natives of Manchester, N.H., they're parked for the summer at an RV park in Salisbury, Mass. In October, they're off to Florida. Their summertime neighbors, Joe and Audrey Darrigo, will travel southwest to the only real estate they've owned since selling their home in Chelmsford, Mass., in 2001 – a concrete parking pad with utility hookups, which they bought four years ago in Yuma, Ariz., for $30,000.

Full-timing can be as comfortable as an old pair of slippers. The Comire's white coach is outfitted with four televisions, a gas stove, convection oven, oak cabinets, and washer/dryer. The couple keeps wind chimes on a side mirror and photos of their grandchildren on the dashboard.

Guests relax on a cream-colored leather couch in a slide-out wing that extends, at the push of a button, almost four feet beyond the side of the coach. It's like a retractable living room.

The campground furnishes hookups to electricity, cable, water, sewer, and wireless Internet, most of which is free (as is rent) for the Comires in exchange for their working a few shifts in park maintenance and administration.

In Maine, the Woodmans are taking a thriftier approach in their 34-foot Fleetwood Bounder, a secondhand unit they bought last year for $23,000. "The house," as John Woodman calls it, gets 8.5 miles per gallon. They drive only a few miles twice a week to a wastewater treatment plant, where John dons bright blue latex gloves to empty the septic tank.

This week, they also need to find somewhere to park for a few hours. The Colby College trustees are going to picnic on the field they've called home while Jane's been working on campus as a math camp administrator. The rest of the year she teaches essay writing online to seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-graders from around the world through a Baltimore-based center for gifted youth.

It's a way of life that requires flexibility, but can also be rewarding. John feels his health has improved since he quit his stressful property management job and went on the road full time. "We realize that if we had a medical emergency, it would wipe us out" since John lacks health insurance, Jane says. "But that's also true for people with a lot more than we have."

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The lifestyle does come with trade-offs. The Woodmans say they miss singing in local church groups. Brenda Comire has had to deal with anguished questions from a daughter: "How can you abandon the family?" The Comires also found themselves parked indefinitely in a daughter's snow-covered New Hampshire driveway once after Roger was hospitalized. "I was asking, 'What are we going to do?' " Brenda recalls. But within a month, they were back on the road.

For the most part, full-time RVers find life on the road far more therapeutic than onerous. The Woodmans, for instance, shed most of their possessions when they went on the road, something that left them feeling unburdened and calm.

Once they settle in a new place, they rely on two bicycles and a Dodge Neon for local transportation. The move has helped them reduce their carbon footprint – and get a little more exercise. "It's liberating," says Jane, "to know exactly what's enough."

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